Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, I see a whole lot of media parallels to Nazi Germany, but the two historical analogues that really pop to mind for me are the French Revolution and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. Both of which ended in slaughter - the Napoleonic Wars for the former and ethnic cleansing for the latter. People are crying dictatorship now, but I don't see that being the ending here; rather, I see it as being war and death on a massive scale.

The other thing to remember about the French Revolution was that nearly all the revolutionaries who came to power during it were dead by the end of it. The folks who are crying "We're in power now, suckas!" are being extremely stupid. Power doesn't last long at times like this.

The other thing that scares me is that the best place to be in all those historical times of crisis was an ocean away from the place where the crisis starts. But that doesn't work today; we have weapons with global reach that can level whole cities in 30 minutes. If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.

> If the U.S. disintegrates nowhere on earth is safe.

This is a very Hollywood action film way of seeing the world. In the case of an American civil war, it's unlikely that it will be fought using nuclear weapons, and in that case, it's unlikely that they would use any on say, Chile, or Australia.

Europeans are screwed though.

That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.

If you live in Chile, the main danger is not that the U.S. drops a nuke on you. It's that Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India, which then can no longer export rice to Saudi Arabia, where revolt breaks out, which cuts off the flow of oil, which makes Chile's economy grind to a halt.

> Pakistan (freed from fear of international condemnation) drops a nuke in India

India is also a nuclear state, so this is pretty unlikely unless the wheels really come off the deterrence strategy. North Korea attacking South Korea perhaps, but even that seems unlikely as it would greatly anger NK's closest ally of China.

> That's not really the threat model. It's that the U.S. has played the role of policing the world's oceans and world's regional conflicts since WW2. If the U.S. descends into civil war, it will be too preoccupied with internal power struggles to continue to play that role. Many, many countries elsewhere in the world will take the opportunity to settle old scores and jockey for regional advantage. Meanwhile, the population in many countries is supported by food imports that can only be sustained while global trade can freely occur.

So it’s not the Hollywood action movie view of the world. It’s just the standard 2005 version of Pax Americana make-believe.

Meanwhile Israel has attacked Iran and its US ally said “we want to do that too”.

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